Mysterious illness in Alabama stumps CDC

The church will not be on earth during the Tribulation period, formally known as the Time of Jacob's Trouble. (Jeremiah 30:7, more here on what that means). I am comfortable and certain of this interpretation and therefore can concentrate all my energies on this present time before the imminent rapture without having to worry about how to survive the Day of the LORD. (The rapture has always been imminent). Left, Bride of Christ, Johann Thorn Prikker

The Tribulation is a short period. It will be 7 years long, with the Great Tribulation being half of that. So much occurs during this very brief time. The antichrist forces a mark on all humans, he hunts down almost all the Christians who refuse the mark, 144,000 people evangelize the world, most of the world dies in various plagues and wars, the geography changes utterly, and politically & economically the entire global structure shifts to one world government and one world economy. Phew.

That is why I believe that the set-up to these things, though long in coming, is being laid prior to the actual beginning of the Tribulation. A bonfire is prepared before the match is struck. You clear a ring, gather stones, pile firewood, and ready the kindling. Once the match is struck the fire begins. It will take only the LORD'S command to begin that conflagration. It will get going with force as soon as the first seal is broken and the antichrist rides. (Revelation 6:1-2).

One of the spookiest things to me is the prediction of plague during the Tribulation. There is a lot to be concerned about for the people left behind to endure this period. There will be Hades on earth as demons are unleashed from the abyss (Revelation 9:1-3). 100 lb hailstones will fall from heaven, squashing people (Revelation 16:21). Beasts will attack and kill many. (Revelation 6:8). Worst of all, spiritually, God will be harder to find, worship will become almost non-existent. The light of God's revelation will be almost entirely snuffed out. (Amos 8:11; Luke 18:8).

Of course even thinking about how God will cause a famine for the Word once again to come onto the land like He did in Amos's day makes me tear up. But in the physical realm, the notion of runaway plague strikes fear in my heart. I am even afraid of it now. Stephen King's The Stand, an apocalyptic novel where King imagined 99.8% of the world's population killed by a shifting antigen superflu, struck a chord with me even thirty-five years ago when the book was was published.

The bubonic plague in the middle ages was horrific, particularly the outbreak in the 1300s. Wikipedia states that "The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350, and killing between 75 million and 200 million people." The plague at that time killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe's population.

In 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic was considered worse than that. Wikipedia again, "was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus (the second being 2009 flu pandemic). It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—3 to 5 percent of the world's population at the time—making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history."

With all the human manipulation of genetic strains of diseases, it is only a matter of time until one of them escapes its petri dish and slays the world. We have sought to weaponize bacteria, we've genetically manipulated God's creation by cloning animals, altering their DNA, and doing other unholy scientific things. All this genetic manipulation will at some point escape man and unleash a deadly plague.

We know that there already is an increasing resistance to antibiotics. "Antibiotic resistance is a serious and growing phenomenon in contemporary medicine and has emerged as one of the pre-eminent public health concerns of the 21st century, particularly as it ... is relevant to organisms which cause disease in humans." (source). We know that there are diseases rising up again that we thought we had put away for good. This is a fact, there will be plague. We know that plague will kill a fourth of the world and be a major factor throughout the Tribulation. (Revelation 6:8, Luke 21:11). Is the bonfire for it being laid now? I believe so.

The combination of the prediction of last days rampant pestilence, the past history of epidemic's deadly force, the ease of travel these days and spreading infection globally in a heartbeat, and the present indicators of diseases on the verge of being out of control, do give me pause.

For example, here is an article out of Dothan, Alabama. Dothan is at the SE corner of Alabama near where it meets with GA and FL. An unknown respiratory illness has hospitalized 7 people from that area, and two of those patients have died.

"Seven people have been admitted to area hospitals, and two of them have died, in what health officials described Tuesday as a “cluster” of respiratory illnesses with flulike symptoms. ... Peggy Williams, a state Department of Health investigator, said of the five people who remained hospitalized Tuesday, one was in an intensive care unit at a local hospital. Lesa C. Smith, a registered nurse with the state Department of Public Health, said the three symptoms to watch for include fever, coughing and shortness of breath.

Smith also said they don’t have a general common denominator among the seven people admitted to the hospital. She said they’ve had several young people and an elderly person among the cases, so it’s been difficult to determine who might specifically be at risk." (source)

This illness has emerged within the last month, since April 19, 2013. The current mortality rate in this cluster is 28%. The Alabama Department of Public Health has released a news brief on it and held a news conference. (source)

Getting a grasp on the illness is currently eluding the Center for Disease Control. They're stumped.

A similar disease is stumping officials in Texas. "Mystery illness claims the life of 2 area teens, a third is critical"

"Like fever, cough, like respiratory failure, pneumonia, seizures," said Dr. Syed Ibrahim, MD, MPH. "In the child who's admitted at Texas Children's Hospital now, he's having liver enlargment and spleen enlargment."  The hospital confirmed that the teen is in critical condition.  Two teenagers, one from Montgomery County and one from Liberty County, have died from an illness health experts have not been able to diagnose."

Coronavirus is a threat in Saudi Arabia. Here is news for that new ("novel") disease that is related to respiratory disease.

"Worldwide, there have now been 41 laboratory-confirmed infections, including 20 deaths, since the new coronavirus was identified by scientists in September 2012. The novel coronavirus, which had been known as by the acronym nCoV but which some scientific journals now refer to as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, or MERS, belongs to the same family as viruses that cause common colds and the one that caused a deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003. MERS cases have so far been reported in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Britain, Germany and France, but Saudi Arabia has had the vast majority of cases. (source)

Now that's a 50% mortality rate. Though mostly contained to Saudi Arabia, there is some consternation today because a Tunisian man has died from it.

"A 66-year-old Tunisian man has died from the new coronavirus following a visit to Saudi Arabia and two of his adult children were infected with it, the Tunisian Health Ministry reported. ... The cases are the first for Tunisia and indicate that the virus is slowly trickling out of Saudi Arabia, where more than 30 coronavirus cases have been reported. There have been at least 20 deaths worldwide out of 40 cases."

I wonder if anyone else out there is as spooked by the knowledge of how easy it would be for a disease exactly like the Dothan AL illness to widen its grip, and become runaway like the Spanish Flu did in 1918. Or coronoavirus. Or avian flu. Or SARS. Or...

At some point, the final pestilences will emerge exactly like horror writer Stephen King laid out. The difference is that this time when it does, it won't be a fiction book. It will be real.

You can escape all these things by believing on the name of Jesus as your Lord and Savior now. Do you recognize that you are a sinner? That each wrong thing you've ever done or even thought causes you to fail the standard of perfect holiness that God requires for a person to enter heaven? Impossible, you say? It is! The GOOD NEWS is that God sent His perfect Son to live a perfectly holy life, be the sacrifice for all our sins, and die on the cross, taking all of God's wrath for sin upon Himself. God was satisfied with His son and raised Him to life on the third day.

Now, if you believe this, you will not have to live a perfectly holy life, an impossibility anyway. You won't have to take eternal punishment for your sins, enduring God's wrath in the lake of fire. Jesus took it for you already. If you believe, Jesus's righteousness will be imputed to your account, and you will be adopted in the family of God. Repent soon. Now is the day of salvation.